I am a fan of kalamata olives and when I'm looking for or gifting a savory bread, I enjoy making this kalamata olive & rosemary sourdough bread.  The delicious bold notes of the kalamata olives and rosemary in this bread transport me to a farm in the Tuscany countryside where my family stayed at during one of our trips to Italy.  Our villa was surrounded by gently sloping rows of grapevines, bordered by olive trees. The elderly couple that owned the farm prepared dinner for us each evening and to this day, my daughters remember "Massimo's garlic toast". The husband would take slices of stale sourdough and scrub them with fresh garlic cloves and sprigs of rosemary before pan frying them in a generous pool of olive oil. 

For this kalamata olive & rosemary sourdough bread, I increased the whole wheat flour content in this recipe.  I also changed the technique to allow the sourdough to extract much of the micro-organisms in the wheat germ for maximum nutrition.  It may take extra time to proof, but it's well worth the increase in nutritional value.

It's important to know when to add the various inclusions since this recipe has kalamata olives and rosemary as "inclusions", 

Tips for making kalamata olive & rosemary sourdough bread

Adding Inclusions.

Rosemary.

Since you want your fresh, chopped rosemary to be uniformly distributed throughout the bread, it is best to add it during the stretch and fold process. This allows the rosemary enough time to be fully incorporated into the dough.  However, add this before the third stretch and fold, because you want the dough to build strength first before you add these herbs.  Adding it too early will break some of the dough structure, resulting in a bread that may not rise well.  Adding it at the end will result in a swirl of rosemary which may look good but would really be a mouthful of rosemary!

Kalamata olives.

Kalamata olives are salty.  As a result, it is best to only add the olives at the end when you are doing the pre-shaping.  Salt affects the proofing so incorporating these salty bits at the end during shaping reduces the effect of salt during proofing and allows  all the olives to be nestled in the dough.  However, this does not guarantee that some of these olives may pop out when oven spring occurs, but will minimize the amount of olives being exposed.

Let me know what you think about this kalamata olive & rosemary sourdough in the comment section.